Spent this evening registering voters outside a WalMart in Houston
(I wrote this last night, then fell asleep at my computer before posting it - ha ha)
Traffic was brisk. I got there around 4:30 and stayed 3 hours, catching about 45-50 new or recently moved voters. It was my church group and so we were pretending to be nonpartisan. I must've heard 300+ people tell me they were already registered. Sampling humanity like that, you get a real spectrum. Early in the evening people were polite. As the evening sky darkened, people began to look more harried by the shopping at WalMart experience--a little more desperate, a little more beat down by life. But still we found new people. A lady from Florida who'd just moved here. A Canadian girl who apologized for not being able to vote. Sheesh. An immigrant mom who'd just registered herself and now was wanting her 19 year old boy to sign up. A two mom couple dragging a United Nations of five kids out to the parking lot (funny, I coulda swore they'd entered the WalMart with six kids--but you gotta allow for attrition). A pretty couple from "a blue state" (I suspect a purplish-blue state) who were Republicans and wanted to vote absentee where it'd "do some good." I really tried to reassure him that his vote here in Texas wouldn't be wasted. I failed, but at least you can argue I'm an equal opportunity recruiter.
We saw the desperate and the hopeful. We saw a million smiles and at least three dozen busy dodges. International students explained they couldn't vote, only three cynics the whole evening told me there was no point in voting. Non-English speakers blanched at me in at least four different languages. In my shredded barbecue Spanish I helped one old guy from Brownsville register for the first time. As many as ten ex-cons told me they couldn't vote in Texas--most had galleries of tattooes and piercings adorning their arms and heads. I heard at least twenty folks tell me "of course" they were registered. I thanked them; I smiled. Only one guy got really ugly: he followed his "of course I vote" with the muttered addendum "I'm white". I wished him a pleasant evening too. Once he was gone I began thinking of a barrage of snarky responses I'd never get to use. A dozen or so people said they'd come back tomorrow for the last day of registration--I believed almost half of them would. But the myriad of nice church lady smiles is what'll stick with me.
I was tired: spent last night grading papers and had been up on my feet running about the classroom from 7am to 3:30pm. But you get a weird kind of energy boost from a rainbow of smiles outside the sliding glass doors of WalMart. There were smiles of relief we weren't selling something; smiles of pride they'd already registered or had been voting for 40 years; smiles of gratitude that someone came to them and actively sought to help them participate; smiles of awkward brush-offs; smiles of nervous reflex at my big goofy grin and assertion "Howdy, we're registering voters today. Have you signed up yet?"
I think most of the smiles were the pleasant reprieve from the faceless march out from the discount store toward the discount parking lot.It won't make a difference by itself, of course, four Unitarians with earnest smiles acting neighborly and doing a thankless civic chore. We were in a purple neighborhood in a bluish city in the biggest reddest Red State in America. Just lots of good will and maybe one small thrill--that of playing a small role in the democracy I love--the kind of democracy that forces you to greet your neighbors, to damn the facelessness of consumer America and shake a few hands, empower a few extra votes, pass along a nice feeling, and really experience the flood of beautiful people who make up my town.
When I see democracy in action, I kinda don't give a damn if I win or lose. I have faith that in the long run we'll make a better world, because democracy makes that possible. I'm exhausted now; I gotta wake up at 5:30 and dig more salt out of the mines; my feet stink.
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